#'hey what if Leslie killed Steph?' was a good idea

[takaraphoenix]

Sooo Steph’s dead, huh.

I mean. I knew that. That there’s the whole she’s dead but not really because we retcon that Leslie faked her death which is still really fucked up but honestly it’s a fix compared to Leslie-kills-a-child so like yay for the retcon but still what the fuck. I’m aware of this mess existing.

It’s just... In the greater scheme of non-chronological reading that I’m doing, I didn’t know when this mess would happen. And, apparently, it happened.

I learned about Steph’s death from fucking Slade. Slade taunting Tim about how much he’s lost recently. His dad. Steph. Conner.

And that is such a way of learning about her death. I knew about Tim’s dad (I still don’t understand why that was necessary but that’s its own post), because there was a funeral, there was grief, there was support from the team.

Conner’s death was a whole arc. And a lot of messy grief and dealing/not dealing with it afterward.

Both of these were major events that were shown to have a huge impact on Tim in the Teen Titans. We see him deal with his feelings, or, you know, try hard not to deal with them in the case of Conner.

But Steph’s death was just... not brought up at all? And that’s absolutely wild. Even if she hadn’t been his girlfriend and had just been a fellow team member of the Bat Fam, there should have been a mention. A feeling. A something.

Just. Nothing. Slade’s the one who has to break the news that she apparently died to me, as the audience, because Tim has not had any feels or focus on that at all. And that is absolutely wild to me, especially when I consider the way his dad and Conner - and Tim’s feelings about both those deaths - had been brought into TT.

Why did they disrespect my girl like that...?

[arobinwithoutbatman]

((Alrighty! Comics time! Pretty sure I'm up to Knightfall Crusade volume 2.

And we're starting off strong with the fucking clown

...I'm sorry, this director is actually going along with Joker's bullshit? Willingly?!?!

I'm... somewhat concerned about the fact that Jean Paul is now being secretly filmed and Joker is at least smart enough to notice something has changed other than the obvious suit changes I mean

Yeah Joker's gonna lose his shit cause that's not Bruce under the cowl and Jean Paul is very much falling into burnout and despair because he has no outside connections

...why do I get the feeling that's not Tim? And that everyone is going to be very surprised when 'Batman' doesn't give a shit?

--------------------

I was right, it's not Tim and Joker is steadily getting more pissed

Well at least he was nice enouhg to check up on the poor college student caught up in all this

I hate everything about this

-------------

Jean... buddy... the system isn't a good thing

And Joker's clocked it's a different person under the cowl

Yup. JP's getting worse! Somehow. Didn't realise he could get worse but hey, life long brainwashing will do that

Gordon's marriage is on the rocks too

...listen... I hate that JP was cheated out of killing the Joker, frankly the man drives me nuts... but there is so much harm being done to Batman's reputation that's going to take forever to unravel

----------------------

Immigration story, okay. This came out in the 90s if I remember correctly so yeah, this was definitely a big topic at the time

Jfc, can this man get any further from the original ideas Bruce had?

Yup, just like I thought, JP has completely lost what little nuance he was able to figure out in situations. Yeah, this fictional woman arrived illegally because it was the only way to get her stolen child back

Baby's in California? Oh honey... you're on the wrong coast

Lol Gordon saying "You should have been a detective!" Because it's true. Bruce was. JP isn't and it's becoming more and more obvious

Human trafficking is also an issue... not surprised comics would attempt to talk about it

----------------------

Oh good, JP's actually trying to resist his programming again after the previous issue

...uhhhh... buddy? I dunno who you are but uhhh there's probably all sorts of diseases in long dead bones and any surviving bone marrow that's likely fucking up your health and your brain

And JP's finally actually trying to do the detective work! And starting to ask questions about what he's actually doing and what he believes! Finally! Do your shadow work, dude!

----------------

Ooof poor guy basically being walking acid

...okay... and whomst the fuck is this hero?

School teacher who picked up a power during an alien invasion? Mkay

-------------------

OKay back to the crazy bone eating serial killer

Oh hey Alfred! Hey Bruce!

Tim!!!! My boy is back! Finally!

...briefly... and he's dealing with Cluemaster and the Speedboyz still just on the downlow. WHich is probably gonna come up in his solos whihc is after Knightfall which means I get to see my girl Steph

----------

Lunch break before I do this next one

------------

Okay, back to it.

Mutated former cop facing off against JP? Mkay

I really don't like this particular set of street thugs but that might just be because I'm having a hard time parsing their phonetically written accent

And Abbatoir is still out and about

------------------

Creatures of Clay? Ah fuck, Clayface is showing up, isn't he?

Ooooohhhhh Leslie's pissed and understandably so. Bruce is gonna have a hell of a time explaining that it wasn't him under the cowl for the last... however long it's been

Lady Clayface? Huh

Wow... realy just let her go splat

Huh... Clayface has to pass his thing on and infect others just to deal with the pain?

DIfferent name too. Awwww Preston and his wife are expecting! But now they really need to double down on finding whatever disease he has

-----------------

So Abbattoir took little baby Cassius Clay and Clayface 3 and Lady Clay just wanted him back but now, both are going to prison

And also he's got his cousin now so that's not good

-------------

Penguin? Mkay

HAH Gordon and Penguin just ripping into each other, I love it

Damn... Jim's seriously willing to do anything to make sure his wife is okay

Oh good, JP was in fact working on it, he's just worse at communicating than Bruce is

And Penguin's inspired once more and likely thinks JP is no longer an imposter or stand in

-------------

Snipers now? Well then

Hunters turned hired killers... I hate them

----------------

Oh shit back to Abattoir

And another appearance from Tim!

You tried, Tim, not your fault JP's mind is such a mess

But that's gonna be a huge stain on Bruce's legacy; multiple people died tonight because he was more focused on vengenace

----------------------

He feels righteous?!

Nope. That's it. He's just Azrael at this point. And trauma. Sooooo much trauma

Yup, he's just gonna kill again. Gordon's recognised it and destroyed the Bat Signal because JP doesn't care

FUck me, I hate this arc and desperately want it to be over. I wouldn't be reading this at all if it weren't providing much needed context for what Tim's up to and why

------------------

Judging by the page count, this is the last one in this volume and thank fuck for that!

Ah. Gunhawk. Seeking medical attention for his wife

Massive gunfight in a hospital involving flamethrowers yeah that's real smart -.-

[dykerachelsummers]

hey i saw your post and i'm confused errm didn't dick quit himself? and steph never died? she stole the mantle from tim and leslie faked her death in war games so steph would have a chance to 'a normal life'. i don't know i may be wrong too bc there's so many reboots in dc for my liking they keep changing characters' stories but yeah. i thought that's how it went. ^^

nope, bruce fired him. this is what happened in the first issue of the story nightwing: year one! it’s possible there are other stories that i’m forgetting, and i’m personally not much of a fan of chuck dixon’s writing bc uhhhhh fuck dixon as a person, but it’s pretty well accepted that dick got fired. not once, but twice actually! bruce also fired him as a kid, but took it back that time.

also, re: steph’s death, you’re both right and wrong! leslie did canonically fake her death and take her to africa, but her heart canonically stopped beating several time’s during surgery and to be completely honest, i pay more attention to the intent of the writers here.

so it was retconned that steph’s death was fake, but the original plans was to kill her and keep her dead and she stayed so for several years. they only changed it because fans wanted her back so badly.

also, i wouldn’t really describe steph as stealing the mantle from tim. tim wasn’t robin when she took up the mantle for a few weeks/a month or so. he had been forced to retire by his dad and they had no idea if he was going to be able to come back. she told bruce he needed a robin and she thought she’d be good for it and he provisionally agreed to it, as long as she didn’t disobey him.

edit: apparently there is a canon where dick quit! thanks @arrowswing for the clarification 💜

[bigskydreaming]

Batman AU where a pissed off Dick Grayson, after being fired from Robin and kicked out by Bruce, doesn’t go back to the circus when he was off finding himself. Before he became Nightwing. He meant to, even made it all the way to Europe on his way to their latest stop, but in London he got....distracted, when he ran into one John Constantine.

Now, back at this point in canon, Constantine was probably in his mid-twenties at most. I’ve always pictured him mid to late thirties in current comic canon, he’s one of those guys who comes off as older than he is, b/c like, lbr, dude lives ROUGH, lol. But me being me, like, I’m not looking to hook nineteen year old Dick Grayson up with a mid-twenties staggering disaster in whiskey-soaked human form. However, that does not mean that Dick, recently feeling disillusioned about numerous things as well as lost and directionless, two things that define John in a lot of his decades, let alone twenties - 

Like, it doesn’t mean he doesn’t THINK about it, and perhaps romanticize the idea of him and John being kindred spirits. As well as maybe a little attracted to Constantine’s patented performative way of living, aka “watch how I windmill through life, giving no fucks whilst taking whatever latest misfortune befalls me in an unaffected and devilishly snarky stride, because of the thing about the no fucks, see, that’s the connection there.”

And okay, if we’re being totally honest here, its not like it just COMPLETELY didn’t occur to Dick that he was coming up with reasons to justify sticking around and hanging out and also crushing on one of the people MOST likely to tick his dad off. I mean, let’s face it, John is like, the combination of three things Bruce has zero patience for and avoids or outright disdains whenever possible: 

1) Magic, ugh, unreliable, illogical. (Bruce’s super-objective POV on the subject) - Look. It makes no sense. Follows no logical rules. Every usage of it is a breakdown of the normal universe and the ordered mechanism of The Way Things Are Supposed to Work, the things Batman relies on, needs in order to be him, the Great Detective, the guy who understands how everything works and that’s how he stays one step ahead of everyone else.

In a word, magic and all its works are RUDE and they like....annoy him just on principle.

2) Eternally late and relentlessly slovenly (not everyone has a live-in BUTLER Bruce, jeez) 

and 

3) ...John Constantine. (Let’s be real. This one just is what it is. There’s not a whole lot of getting around it. Its hard for Dick at age 19 to pretend buddying up with John isn’t guaranteed to make Bruce grind his teeth, given that its hard for anyone at any age to pretend that while Bruce almost certainly respects the things John has accomplished at various times....being in the same zip code as him is something he tries to avoid. Their personalities are not super compatible).

So, its a tiny bit possible the Great Divergence of this AU from canon.... comes down to one accidental team-up with one of Batman’s Top Ten Favorite People, No Seriously....and then Dick kinda leaning into being a bit of a petty shit here. Look, its not his finest hour, but Bruce started it, and also, like whatever. Alexa, play ‘Teenage Wasteland’ but y’know, all...SUPER LOUD and ANGSTILY. 

Ahem. Anyway.

So even though Constantine rather famously likes neither people nor drama, and Dick is both those things.....Dick is also always effortlessly charming and makes friends wherever he goes. In the end, it should come as no surprise to anyone but Constantine that he is no more Immune to Dick’s innate Likeability Quotient than most of the rest of humanity. 

And for a couple of weeks they kinda just hang out, get into random mishaps with magical gargoyles and ensorcelled ravens around the Tower of London and also one specific clash with a demonically possessed umbrella that turned anyone who held it into like, Mary Poppins, but also, y’know, EVIL - look it was this whole thing, don’t ask, Constantine still doesn’t like to talk about it. He even offered to show Dick how to do a minor cantrip if his mischief minded companion would agree to keep his mouth shut on the subject from now until the end of eternity.

Dick had to hem and haw over that one for a bit, but ultimately his innate curiosity won out over his fondness for telling a rousing but also hilarious tale. It was a very narrow margin, but that was all that was needed to have Dick’s foot take its very first step along a very different road in this universe. 

See, Constantine’s not really expecting much to happen even as he walks Dick through the steps of the simple spell. Magic’s as unpredictable about who it’ll roll over and play tricks for as it is in how it operates and functions and like...basically accomplishes all the many varied feats that make Bruce develop spontaneous frustration migraines, because that’s not how reality works, none of this has anything to do with how reality WORKS, what happened to the RULES, dammit!

And sure, there’s all sorts of different kinds of magic, and all kinds of different lines various magic practitioners sort into....some are born into it, like the Zataras, and Constantine himself actually, though in a very different way from the former....others end up developing a knack for it after significant encounters with arcane or occult beings, forces, artifacts or the like, as though their exposure to such a focused concentration of it resulted in a kind of charge rubbing off on them, just enough to make them able to attract and gather and channel magical forces from then on themselves. Others are chosen to it, and some just have no clue why spells will work for them but not ten random pedestrians they stop on the street and use as a rather strange sample group.

But bottom line is magic isn’t just about practice and skill, you tend to either have a knack for it or you don’t, and more people don’t than do, so John’s pretty much expecting to fulfill his end of their little gentleman’s agreement and then watch Dick duplicate everything he did exactly, with zero result.

Except turns out, Dick Grayson DOES have a knack for magic, same as he has a knack for well, everything. The guy was crime fighting and kicking bad guy ass in middle school. Forget James Bond and Captain Kirk, forget even Batman himself, ROBIN is the original and ultimate Gary Stu. Of fucking course Dick would be good at magic if he ever tried it. There’s a fairly large school of thought in this universe that posits that the force they call magic is an almost living entity in its own way, perhaps even sentient. Most of the magicians and wizards and sorcerers in that school of thinking kinda all quietly nurse the opinion that magic just, like....likes Dick Grayson, and he just charmed it with his first attempt at that simple spell and had it wrapped around his finger by the time he said Abra Kadabra.

(Because of fucking COURSE John picked a spell he could end with Abra Kadabra, have you met the man? He’s the most dramatic of them all, why do you think he hates both people and drama so much??? He’s the people and the drama!)

So there we have one lost and directionless Dick Grayson, feeling like he’s lost his footing and all his old plans and projected paths don’t really fit him anymore, or at least not well enough to help him feel like he’s headed somewhere, doing something.

Buuuuuut, then there’s that petty teenage side of him again, the one that goes fuck Batman, and also I’m right to say so.....and at least that IS a direction to focus on, even if not the most noble one....so the same brain cells that linked up and logic’d him around to the conclusion that ‘Bruce will never think to look for me with John Constantine of all people, and LOL how much would he hate that’....like, big fans of the positive reception their prior performance had received, those same brain cells leap back into action with zeal and zest and steer him to the not all that distant conclusion:

“LOL, how much would Bruce hate it if I ended up being this like, super talented magician, with expertise he knows nothing about? Could you imagine?”

Turns out Dick could, and did, and so much like that initial inch in this direction, is the true basis of him following up on that and becoming a renowned sorcerous superhero in this universe the fateful last words “Screw you dad, you’re not the boss of me and I’ll do what I want!”

I mean. Yeah. That’s pretty much exactly how it began. Yup. Oops.

But the thing is, that’s just how it starts. A random string of chance encounters and events that capture Dick’s attention and interest at a time and a place in his life where he was looking for literally anything to do just that....but once it HAD his attention and interest, everything changed. It was no longer about thinking ‘hey this will really tick Bruce off,’ because Dick’s capable of that train of thought and gut/impulsive decision making, sure, but he’s not about to commit his entire LIFE to that just to flip Bruce the proverbial middle finger. 

It only continues, he only keeps going and furthering his magical studies because he genuinely comes to love it for the sheer versatility, the unpredictability of it, the way holding reality in one hand and magical forces in the other is like walking a tight rope with no safety net, and sure its not the same thing as flying, but on that note, did you know there are spells that can literally make you fly? 

Dick does, now, and he knows like, seventeen different ones.

And so Dick throws himself into studying magic the same way he throws himself into everything. He’s never done anything half-assed in his life. He’s physically allergic to the very idea of it. When he does a thing, he fucking COMMITS, and becomes the best he possibly can at it....which ultimately almost always puts him in the one percentile of that thing. 

He learns everything he can from Constantine, or at least as much as Constantine’s willing to teach him. Eventually their paths diverge, not because of any bad blood, but just because Dick isn’t interested in the same specialties as Constantine. So then he moves on. Travels the world, similar to what Bruce did when he was his age, training to become Batman. But Dick trains with magicians, wizards, alchemists. Madame Xanadu. Sebastian Faust. Raven. Even charms freaking Circe into teaching him an enchantment or two, because lbr, a mystically inclined Dick Grayson would inevitably intrigue the more infamous mystics of the DC universe in the same way a combat-focused Dick Grayson intrigues Deathstroke and assorted others.

Everyone except for Zatanna and Jason Blood, the magicians Bruce actually respects and relies on, and who Dick is sure would report back to Bruce about him, and he’s still ticked. Plus, Zatanna’s type of magic is innate, not really something that can be taught, and Blood’s stems from his sharing his body with a demon and Dick’s not really looking for a roommate right now.

Eventually, Dick is satisfied enough with his skills and knowledge to return to the Titans. He adopts the name Nightwing, same as in canon and for the same reasons. He’s still the same man, same leader, same fighter with all the skills he already had....just now with the added repertoire of someone who’s branched off in an unlikely direction. 

Hey, Bruce did want him to go to college and learn something new. Not Dick’s fault his particular field of study isn’t Bruce-approved. (Okay, its entirely Dick’s fault, since that was after all the point, but eh. Oh well).

Nightwing’s still an acrobat and hand-to-hand fighter. He’s invested too much time, effort, himself into those skills to just give them up. He’s an adrenaline junkie, thrives on motion, activity, the rush of going head to head with someone who can really push him, challenge him. His magic is incorporated into his fighting. He constructs who he becomes as magician around the foundation already in place due to who he is as an acrobat, detective and hand to hand combatant. His magic is an added skill, not a replacement for his previous skillsets.

So he has alchemical potions on his utility belt, amid his ordinary smoke bombs and gas pellets. Tools and spells of divination and scrying for when a trail goes cold and can’t be tracked further by ordinary means. But now the Titans have another mystical expert to turn to for magical related missions, not just Raven. Their specialties are entirely different, but they’ve worked together since Raven first came to this plane, and they still complement each other well.

Of course, this changes things in other ways too. Dick’s new focus takes him further away from his time with Batman than even in canon. He’s still traveling and training for most of the time Jason is Robin and never even meets him before his death. Of course he kept tabs on Gotham no matter where he was. He absolutely knows about the adoption, about a second Robin. And about Jason’s eventual death. But he’s still somewhere places unknown in the aftermath, not easily tracked down by Tim, who sets out to help Bruce on his own, wearing down Bruce’s resistance to him being Robin between just his and Alfred’s efforts. Dick remains largely estranged from the Batfamily as Cass is adopted, Steph takes her turn as Robin, etc.

And then Jason comes back from the dead. 

But again, things play out differently here. This Jason is never found by Talia and the League, never dumped into a Lazarus Pit. Instead, Leslie Thompkins opens up her clinic one day to find a catatonic Jason in a bed inside, not long after he’s resurrected. He recovers as mysteriously as he returned, helped along by being in familiar environs, surrounded by loved ones as he’s of course immediately returned to the Manor and attended on by Bruce, Alfred, Babs, Tim and Cass. So he has less resentment for Tim, for being replaced. Its harder to deny Bruce’s love for him when he has Bruce by his bedside, day after day, watching and waiting throughout his recovery. He never suffers from Pit madness. Is never influenced by League ideology. Never trains with monsters and murderers awful enough he wants to kill them himself after he’s done training with them.

And its hard to resent Bruce for not avenging him and killing the Joker, when no one’s seen the Joker since almost right after Jason’s death. The clown never returns to Gotham from Ethiopia, not as far as anyone can tell. By the time Bruce set out to hunt him down, after Jason’s funeral, the trail had gone entirely cold. Bruce hunted for him, sure, but Jason can’t be too mad about Bruce giving up before finding him. The Joker’s never been one to lay low. When even just a few months had passed without even a hint of the villain or his future plans, it was hard to imagine he was still alive - he never lacked for enemies, after all. Not unreasonable that someone else had gotten to him first.

Plus, of course, its hard to compare yourself to the ‘golden boy’ and find yourself coming up short, viewing yourself as less loved than Dick Grayson, when said golden boy still remains estranged. He’s the prodigal son in this reality, with Bruce’s anger towards his eldest for never coming back to the Manor, not even after Jason’s death - its obvious to everyone, even Jason. Tim doesn’t have the close, brotherly bond with Dick that he does in canon, and with less resentment from Jason for replacing him, its easier for the two middle sons of Batman to bond after Jason’s return.

Jason returns to crime fighting, probably still takes up the name the Red Hood - his sense of humor and irony had nothing to do with his death or the specifics of his return. He and Bruce still clash. They have their ideological differences, Jason’s harsher than Bruce would prefer. But this Jason has reasons not to force an all-out divide between he and his father, sticks to the line (even if reluctantly), not because he believes differently - he still thinks he’s right about Bruce’s way being flawed and will always argue so - but because he has reasons to stay. Things he actually feels he’ll lose if he pushes things too much, actually leaves the family. Because he has a family, he has no doubts about that here. Tim and Cass and Alfred and even Bruce. He’d miss them, if he lost them. So he makes sure he doesn’t.

And then, a couple years after his return, Jason starts feeling hunted by something. Some presence, some force constantly shadowing him, stalking him. Something supernatural. Otherworldly. In time, there’s no denying it. He’s actually attacked by some unseen, invisible presence, like some kind of monstrous beast that’s hunting him and only him.

Its hard to come to any conclusion other than that it has something to do with his resurrection. Nobody knows how that happened after all. Not even Jason. But there was definitely nothing natural about it, so with something unnatural hunting him, almost as if he’s ‘the one that got away’ or some kind of affront to the natural order of things, the Batfamily adds 2 + 2 and gets ugh, fuck, we need to call a magician for help, don’t we?

Bruce calls in Zatanna and Jason Blood first, of course. But this is well outside Zatanna’s area of expertise, she has no insight to offer. Blood’s a little bit more help. He’s at least able to confirm that the force is otherworldly, not native to this plane, and might very well have something to do with Jason’s time....not on this plane. And he is able to affirm that there’s nothing demonic about the presence, no whiff of Hell surrounding either it or Jason.

Finally, reluctantly, Bruce calls in John Constantine, at Blood’s suggestion. His number isn’t so much the last one in Bruce’s old-fashioned rolodex so much as its buried somewhere on the Manor grounds, locked in a puzzle box that affords Bruce countless opportunities to turn back or try something else before he finally gets it open and pulls out the card with his contact info and the header: IF YOU ABSOLUTELY MUST USE IN CASE OF EMERGENCY WITH ALL OTHER CONCEIVABLE OPTIONS HAVING PREVIOUSLY BEEN EXHAUSTED PRIOR TO THIS - HERE I GUESS.

Okay, maaaaaaaaybe I’m embellishing a little bit on that one there. But whatever.

And its not like Constantine is the actual last of the last he contacts here. For instance, even more than he’d like to not have to bring in John, he’d really rather not call Raven either, though he knows of her as well of course. 

In this reality, the Titans remain more distant from the Justice League and other heroes. They took Dick’s side when Bruce kicked him out, closing ranks, not to mention Roy’s falling out with Ollie resulting in a similar sentiment from them. And Dick and Roy’s diverged paths here similarly result in them paralleling each other in not reconciling with their fathers - they reaffirm to each other that whatever ‘their part’ in their disputes were, they deserved better than how Bruce and Ollie handled those situations, and they’re not going to let each other settle for being afforded less than the respect and care they deserve. 

So to be clear, its not that even after a couple years, Dick is still actively avoiding Bruce - Bruce’s failure to extend the hand first, make the first attempt at reconciliation and conveying that he still wants and needs Dick in his life, his family...that’s still the underlying issue, and the real change in family dynamics comes from Dick not caving and returning to a similar status quo to what he left, without Bruce ever actually addressing his own behavior and mistakes in driving Dick away without making any real attempt to get him to stay, or to follow him, or to ask him to come home.

As for the rest of the Titans, Wally still became the Flash here when Barry died, but he felt no real need to ‘move up’ to the Justice League, and with all of the rest of the original Titans remaining a cohesive family unit here, he chose to stay with them when not patrolling Central City. And when Kyle Rayner became the last Green Lantern and joined the Titans as in canon, the team was closer, more family than the line-up he was briefly a part of in canon, and so he remained with them as well. 

So the end result is in this universe, for the end of their teens and the early years of their twenties, the Titans go their own way, and they and the JLA keep to their respective ‘corners’ as it were. Meanwhile Tim’s generation remains known as Young Justice.

So back to the Batfam’s problem and Jason’s unknown pursuer. Constantine’s not much more help than Jason Blood was. After all, demons are his specialty too, just in different ways than they are Jason Blood’s. and the other magic he knows isn’t of a sort they need here either. 

He is however, able to offer one bit of advice - what they need, John says, is a magician who specializes in the otherworldly, not just the netherworlds. There are more things in Heaven and Hell than well...just Heaven and Hell. Plenty of other worlds, plenty of other dimensions....the kinds of places something like this creature could have come from. What they need is a planewalker. And luckily for them, Constantine just so happens to know the name of a planewalker who could help them.

Dick Grayson.

And of course the estranged eldest still comes when he’s called, because its never that he didn’t care, its just that he wanted, needed to be called. Even when tragedy struck the family, it wasn’t that he didn’t want to return and be a comfort to them, its just that he wasn’t sure his presence would be a comfort. 

(Though it takes numerous arguments while working on the mystery of Jason’s hunter, like, before this gets even brought up, let alone clarified. All parties involved are of course world-class experts at the cold shoulder, not to mention avoidance tactics and evasive maneuvers of all types.)

And as Jason and his other siblings get to know their mysterious oldest brother, the much alluded to but rarely spoken of first son, the Zitka in the room, the shadow they’ve all always been aware of but never known much about - other than that he had a definite Talent with a capital T for getting under their father’s skin, and while they might be closer with Bruce in this reality, Bruce is still Bruce and that’s still a Talent they all can respect and appreciate - well.

It would be a mistake, Jason realizes, to assume that just because Dick left, that meant that he didn’t keep informed on what he left behind. He has many many means at his disposal now, for getting information when he wants it. 

And it would be a mistake to assume that just because they didn’t see him care, that actually meant that Dick didn’t care. He didn’t have to actually meet Jason to feel at least a connection to the second son to be raised by the same father, the second person to wear his colors, bear his mantle, fight at Bruce’s side. He didn’t even have to know him, to grieve that now he’d never get the chance, when Jason died. To be outraged at the Joker, on his behalf. 

And its not like Dick didn’t have plenty of other reasons to hate the Joker as well - he was the reason he was fired, the reason he and Bruce were estranged, the catalyst of so much of his family’s misfortune.

And no one did ever find a trace of the Joker after Ethiopia.

Almost like he’d dropped off the face of the Earth.

Vanished from it entirely.

Of course, while Dick Grayson might be estranged from his father, he still abides by the code Bruce instilled in him at an early age. He doesn’t kill.

But there are worse things than death, some might say.

Especially for a man like a Joker, because he does have one thing he truly cares about: landing a punchline. Its why everyone assumes he was killed by some other enemy after Ethiopia....the Joker can never go long without making a reappearance. He needs an audience too badly to ever stay hidden for long. 

After all, what is a joke, if there’s no one to hear it?

And then as well, the family never did figure out how Jason ended up in Leslie’s clinic, after he crawled out of his grave. 

How someone found him so quickly, and knew the best place to take him. However Jason ended up resurrected, it surely had to involve considerable power of some sort, supernatural energies that surely had to attract some attention....

at least from someone attuned to the supernatural, who knew how to see such things....

and had reason to occasionally visit the Wayne family cemetery.

Yes, even in this vastly different universe, there’s still a way, still time to reunite a family even this fractured. When you’re a planewalker like Dick Grayson, there’s no road beyond your reach, its just a matter of finding the right one. 

And just because it takes time to find the road that finally leads home....that doesn’t mean its not out there.

[whetstonefires]

fictober prompt #7: “No worries, we still have time.” This one got so long. For a sprint prompt.

“Great. Just great!”

“No worries, we still have time.”

“That’s what you think!” Tim slammed the car trunk. “We have time assuming I-95 isn’t backed up around Baltimore and assuming we can get this tire changed in under fifteen minutes and assuming the spare isn’t flat and assuming that blow-out didn’t damage anything else in the car and assuming we can find the restaurant without any issues and are you filming me?”

Steph grinned over her phone at him. “You’re gonna have to stop being so funny if you want me to stop sharing you with the internet.”

“Grrrrahahaaaa!” Tim threw the lugwrench at the ground, then followed it onto his knees, picked it up, and started levering at the hub cap with the pointy end. “Fine. Whatever. Be like that. Hi internet, here’s how you change a tire. Observe how I wedged the rear wheels for safety’s sake before getting started.”

“Tch.” Steph saved the vid, locked her phone, and stuck it in her pocket before squatting down next to him. “It’s not actually a life-or-death issue whether we make our reservation on time. You could stand to relax a little. We’re on vacation.”

The hubcap popped off. Tim got up, rummaged in the equipment box for a few seconds, and came up with the jack. “Not like you take things any more seriously when it is a life or death issue.”

“I do so!”

“Fine. You do. But you still give me a hard time about—fretting. Like I’m making problems more real by trying to solve them before they have consequences!” He wrenched at a lug nut, probably over-loosening it.

Steph rocked back and forth on the balls of her feet, still crouching. She kept her knees close together because this skirt wasn’t all that long. “Are we really doing this right now?”

“Why not?” He’d finished with the nuts, and tossed the lug wrench underhand back into the equipment box.

“Because you’re in a snit and we won’t get anywhere useful, we’ll just get in a shouting match and wind up extra-late and in shitty moods for our dinner date with your geriatric crush.”

Tim shot a poisonous look over his shoulder before going back to wriggling the block that went under the jack for stability into place in the roadside gravel. “He’s just cool, alright. He did a lot of hero work in Gotham before Bruce was even born.”

“I know. I think it’s really cute how you’re still such a fanboy.”

Tim slid the hydraulic jack into place where it needed to be under the belly of the car, and stood up, clutching the handle of the thing. “Would you not do that.”

Steph grinned up at him. “What?”

“Talk like that. It…when you say nice things so they’re insults. It really gets to me.”

“Wow. Okay.” Tim started pumping the hydraulic jack, careful long smooth strokes like he had for some reason taken the time in his busy busy schedule to practice changing a tire. Steph’s eyebrows climbed as she watched. “…this is why they call it ‘jacking off,’ isn’t it?”

“Oh my god.”

“I thought you weren’t religious.”

Tim turned his face away, but he couldn’t hide the warmth in his voice. “Shut up. I don’t want to laugh right now.”

“Why not? Laugh!” Steph stood up, waving her hands in encouragement. “Relax! There is literally nothing that matters on the line! Mr. Scott isn’t going to think less of us for having a bad tire any more than he would if we missed dinner completely to save a bus full of schoolchildren being taken hostage.”

Tim didn’t argue, but his smooth rhythm on the jack didn’t stutter either, and the set of his chin looked mulish. Steph folded her arms. “Why can’t you enjoy not being under pressure for once? Why do you have to waste every second of your life worrying about some other second you can’t control? It’s exhausting! It pisses me off! Hey, look at me!”

“I thought you didn’t want to do this now.” Tim lowered the jack handle to the ground carefully.

“Shit. I didn’t. But for real! It’s bullshit, Tim! You already decided calling triple-A wasn’t efficient enough so you were doing things yourself, I don’t see how dwelling on all the things that might slow us down later is supposed to help anything now.”

“How is deciding everything’s going to be fine, so you don’t have to make any effort to consider the steps necessary to counter all the reasons it might not be, ‘helping?’”

“Because you can’t plan for everything! When you try all you do is make yourself and everyone around you miserable, and when a thing happens you’re just going to have to improvise anyway!”

Tim flung his hands out, time a-wasting now with no progress on the blown tire. “You think you can just do whatever works for you right now, and leave other people to deal with the fallout.” Steph’s fist clenched, because they never talked about her ‘death’ but that couldn’t not be referencing it. “You never take any responsibility,” Tim rushed on. “No matter how many times it goes wrong, you think you can just take action in the world without having to deal with what that means.”

Steph refused to get drawn into the same old argument. “I’ve been getting better about that. I’ve been working at it. But you? You’re just getting worse! You used to know how to have fun!”

They’d actually had a lot of fun so far, since leaving Gotham, but of course at the first hint of things going wrong he had to fly off the handle and lock down, and go into a snit fit when she tried to be optimistic. “Wasn’t this trip supposed to be about finding yourself and all that crap? What’s that worth if all you do is keep turning into Bruce?”

“For crying out loud, Steph, don’t make this about him.”

“How can I not?”

“Because it’s me! These are my personal hangups about my personal screw-ups! I can’t just offload it all on Bruce! Do I go around blaming anything about you on Cluemaster? Or your mom? Or even Barbara?”

Well, no. Bruce did, sometimes, because of his bullshit ideas about heredity that were honestly one step short of the outright eugenics Damian had been raised on, but that wasn’t really Tim’s bag. He was a critical jerk, but his criticisms tended to be about her, personally. If they were tangled up with where she came from, it was only at the subtext level. “I’m not doing it to score points or something,” she told him, “I’m saying you’re like this because he’s a bad influence, and you need to chill the fuck out. Before you alienate everybody you know and give yourself the cardiovascular issues of a dude three times your age!”

“Rrgh!” Tim turned his back on Steph and went back to loosening lugnuts, with his fingers now. It was a few seconds before he spoke, low and through his teeth. “Do you know how many people died in that war you started? Really died, not just fake died and ran away to Africa?”

The tight line of tension up his back was no match for the sick swoop in Steph’s gut that he would even bring this up. “That was not my idea.”

“Do you know?”

“It’s not like all your scheming and plotting means no one ever gets killed!”

“No. No, of course it doesn’t. But—fewer. That’s the whole point! That’s why I do it, why we do any of it! If I do everything right, fewer people get killed. That’s the point. And if I mess up, more people die. That’s what happens. When we mess up. So we have to do everything we can to not.”

His right hand twitched as he talked, not quite trembling but not able to maintain a consistent grip on the nut, either. Maybe he hadn’t loosened this one enough. His hand slipped off, twice, before he managed to get it turning.

Steph fought to even out her breathing. It wasn’t fair. It wasn’t fair for him to turn every little thing into a giant drama and then talk like it was his moral obligation to do so, like she was flawed as a person for not being as screwed up as him.

She didn’t say that. She didn’t say anything close to it that covered up her own vulnerabilities better, either. She breathed. She’d been practicing this, ever since the months after her so-brief-it-counted-as-fake death when everything had made her too mad and scared to see straight. She’d done a lot of reading about ways to be okay. She’d even talked to a couple of people. Besides Leslie, who hadn’t been in a great place to advise her even if Steph had been able to listen.

“But…” she said finally, getting back to the core of the issue instead of reacting. “Nobody’s going to die, if we’re late to dinner.”

Tim’s hands still weren’t steady, as he smoothed his hair back, almost definitely getting some sort of grime or grease in it. “That…I know. I do know that.”

“So why are you being a dick about it?”

“Hah.” It was a ragged sound, not entirely unlike a laugh, but mostly just a word. “Don’t know how to stop, I guess.”

“So you’re gonna stop now?”

“I’ll try.” He twiddled the last lugnut free, then gripped the blown-out tire by the rim and heaved it loose, sliding it free of the fixed bolts. The jack held. This was good, as either the car didn’t come equipped with jackstands or Tim had decided to dispense with them for this operation, since he wasn’t going under the car himself.

Steph frowned, watching him bend with his arms full of wheel, to set it down in the gravel by the road. Something about how that had been resolved didn’t feel right. His emotions that had been making him lash out had been acknowledged, categorized as misdirected, he’d conceded the point. She’d won. With logic. So what was wrong.

She was trying to be better about this stuff. She still thought the amount of responsibility these batboys took for everyone else ever was condescending and bullshit and also basically a form of self-harm, but she could acknowledge that even if her normal approach was good for her mental health it led to her dropping the ball, sometimes, when she really couldn’t afford that. Or other people couldn’t. So. Middle ground. What was missing, in this conversation. What had they skipped.

While she thought, Tim had retrieved and now carefully hefted the replacement tire—not the normal mini-spare deal, this ride was kitted out with the assumption you might need to change a tire yourself and then immediately engage in a high-speed carchase across several hundred miles of terrain. It wasn’t flat, either. As he fed it onto the waiting lug bolts, Steph got the problem to click. “No one’s going to die,” she said. “But…you’ll be sad if we miss dinner with Mr. Scott. Or if turning up late just makes us look bad, and he doesn’t take to you. You want to impress him, and you’re worried about it.”

Tim finished getting the wheel into place before grumbling in his throat, shoulders hunched up toward his ears. “Yeah, okay, I’m an inveterate suck-up. You’ve got me. I give in. Let it go. Where the hell did I put the lugnuts?”

“Windshield wipers.” He’d laid them out there in a row, apparently having auto-selected a flat surface without consulting his conscious mind. Steph felt her mouth draw in like she’d bitten a lemon. “Also, no, shit, I’m not actually trying to give you a hard time.”

The look he shot her was dubious, before he went back to screwing on lugnuts.

“When you’re worried about something, and I tell you you shouldn’t be, you feel like I’m saying your emotions are dumb,” said Steph.

“Aren’t you?” He didn’t sound sulky so much as guarded, and trying not to sound even that. Why was this dork so bad at pretending not to care except when he was too damn good at it?

“Well…sometimes, yeah.” Because his feelings were dumb a lot. Except that was actually an asshole attitude, wasn’t it; just because his opinions were stupid didn’t mean his feelings were. She guessed. People were always acting like her feelings were stupid, though, did she owe them any better. Ugh. Was she really trying to have a psychological breaththrough while yelling at her ex who was changing a tire on the side of the interstate.

Tim snort-laughed again. His shoulders were coming down. He spun the second lugnut into place. “Okay.”

“But, uh…mostly I just want you to stop being such a downer. Just because you want to feel like crap doesn’t mean I’m obligated to join you.” Wow, so understanding. “Uh. Your feelings aren’t actually dumb. It’s fine if you want people to like you. Even if you should maybe get used to the fact that sometimes they don’t.” He was actually kind of spoiled, to be so used to approval that not getting it scared him, to expect people to help him just because he made a good impression. He was such a child sometimes. Such a man.

“I am used to that,” Tim said. “People don’t like me all the time. I’m not all that likable.”

At least he didn’t sound self-pitying about it, but Steph rolled her eyes. “Sure.”

“I know I have unfair advantages when it comes to making a…strong impression,” he continued, rather irritably, “but I’m sure you hear the same about being a gorgeous blonde. Advantages just means it must be more your fault when you fail.”

“Owch.”

“Generic you.”

“Yeah, I got that.”

The last lugnut as snugged as he could get it by hand, Tim turned a handle and the hydraulic jack depressurized, letting the car sink onto its new wheel. They both watched it in silence.

Tim glanced sidelong at Steph. Gauging something. “I’m sorry I yelled at you?”

“I’m…sorry for making fun of your anxiety because it made me feel bad.”

“I’m…sorry for making you feel bad?”

“Okay, let’s stop there,” said Steph, because this felt like something that could get out of hand. Infinite apology recursion.

Tim nodded. “Could you pass me the lugwrench?”

She went and fished it out of the box he’d thrown it into, while he got down on one knee next to the car again.

“You messed up your nice pants pretty bad,” she pointed out, passing the wrench over. “That’s actually probably worse than being late, in terms of making a good impression.”

“I was sort of thinking you’d drive the rest of the way,” Tim said, bending to his task. “So I can change as we go.”

“…well played.” She’d avoided getting involved in the wheel-changing because she was mad, and because it wasn’t so much a two-person job, and because he was the one who wanted to do it in such a rush and she wasn’t destroying this dress in the attempt. But she couldn’t really argue it wasn’t fair to expect her to drive, now. She even liked driving.

The prospect of facing possible traffic jams and trying to find the right street address and park near an unfamiliar restaurant in an unfamiliar city during rush hour was a lot more intimidating now she had to do it herself, though.

Tim smirked. Ooh, he knew exactly what she was thinking. “Fuck you,” she told him, but nicely.

It caught him by surprise, and he snort-laughed. Didn’t make a dirty joke, because it was Tim and he could be prim like that—Steph was like 95% sure he was still a virgin—but clearly thought about it. The atmosphere lightened as he continued making sure the new wheel wouldn’t fall off. The sound of passing vehicles going 70 miles per hour was much louder when they weren’t making any noise of their own. Good thing the interstate shoulders were so wide.

Tim tightened the last nut, and sat back on his heels. Steph smoothly traded him the shiny hubcap for the lugwrench, and walked over to shove the tool back in the kit. She was pretty sure this box had been well-organized when Tim took it out. Oh well, he could reorganize it at the next motel, next time he got a burst of OCD energy. Better than going through the cold-case files on his laptop. Tim finished forcing the hubcap into place and came after her, stooped under the awkwardly balanced weight of the jack.

It went into the box, too, with its little foundation block, and they wrestled the lid down and the emergency kit back into the trunk, on top of the spare tire compartment, now containing the ruined tire and also refusing to completely close.

Tim handed over the car keys, wiped his hands on a wet-wipe and then a paper towel because of course this car had both, and dug into his luggage for a spare pair of slacks. He was of course the sort of nerd who packed more than one pair of nice black slacks for a roadtrip vacation.

“If there’s one thing I can say for my superhero career,” Tim said brightly, as Steph pulled out onto I-95 heading south again and prepared to merge left, while he began to contort in the passenger’s seat, “it’s that it taught me to get my clothes off fast in adverse conditions.”

“I’d say ooh-lah but that’s basically the opposite of the ingredients for a hot striptease.”

“There is absolutely nothing I can say to that that does not make me look worse, good job.”